The Texas Tech Honors College is encouraging undergraduate students outside of the college to enroll in honors courses.
Heather Medley, director of admissions for the Honors College, said students are required to have at least a 3.0 GPA and preferably less than 50 hours in order to take courses.
A class about Africa taught by Ambassador Tibor Nagy is one of the many classes being offered this spring, she said.
“Not every day you get to have a class with first-hand experience like that,” she said. “It’s just a unique situation that we’re really pleased to be able to offer to our students.”
Medley said many core classes are offered by the college and generally are under the curriculum of most majors at Tech. She said if a student wants to see how the classes are rotated, they can look through previous years on the college’s website.
She said having more intimate learning environments, weekly book clubs and lunch discussions, and scholarships offered for studying abroad are a few of the numerous benefits from taking one of these courses.
Jessica Puthenparampil, a junior psychology major from Missouri City, Texas, said one of the benefits from the Honors College is the early acceptance into medical school, and possibly having the MCATs waived.
She said you have two years to finish prerequisites and build up your application before applying early to the School of Medicine.
“The Honors College has a contract with the School of Medicine where they allow select students to apply early,” Puthenparampil said. “Basically, you would apply your junior year instead of your senior year.”
She said in regular courses you have to teach yourself how to study and had limited professor interaction in those classes, but with the Honors College, you have more one-on-one interactions with professors.
Camden Hoeffner, a junior psychology major from Lubbock, said the college does not make the coursework harder or a heavier load on the students. She said her political science class is more discussion based.
“He’ll present his lecture, what he wants us to know, and then basically, we kind of have to critique the article,” Hoeffner said. “Basically, he provides us with the information and we compare it to what the article said.”
For more information, visit the Honors College website or make an appointment with an adviser.
by Darin Riley
Contributed to The Hub by Jour 3312
About Darin Riley
